So, sometimes you want it lazy loaded, other times you don't? What you do is make up your stinkin' mind!

The opposite of Lazy is Eagar, so you can set it to eagar loading, but that will do it all the time. So, with a single mapping, you need to do it one way or the other.

I usually go through a service layer, and then a DAO. If I need a collection eagarly loaded, in the service layer, I call the getter for the collection after I have accessed the central object through the DAO. So, a given service will load eagarly, and another service will load in a lazy manner.

I think that's what you're getting at.

Thanks for picking up a copy of my book on Hibernate. It's always humbling when someone puts a bit of faith in me and picks up one of my titles.